3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Read “Morning Routine” Articles
This is a message to the marketing departments of all the online newsletters that publish articles titled something like, “A *insert interesting professional title here*’s Morning Routine”. The most recent one I saw was “A Vintage Watch Specialist’s Morning Routine”.
Has anyone else noticed this?
I’m looking at you, Blazer, Elevator, Valet, GQ, Esquire, Huckberry and countless others.
I don’t care about anyone’s morning routine. And I don’t think I’m alone.
From where has this trend emerged? Why do they think I care about how someone spends their morning? I imagine it comes from a misguided belief that if someone has a cool job, then EVERY aspect of their day is interesting.
It’s not true.
Here are the three reasons why these kinds of articles are stupid and why they need to stop being published.
#1 – It’s either full of BS or it’s mind-numbingly boring.
The amount of humble-brags in many of these articles amazes me.
The subject will go on about how they woke up so late today (at 5am) and was only able to get in a paltry thirty minutes of mediation and an hour of yoga. They’ll say they just can’t stand to look at their phones in the morning lest the artificial glow distract from any natural sunlight while they drink organic coffee from a farm that builds shelters for blind puppies. Ugh, mornings are so hectic, amirite?!
And I call BS on all of it!
I bet they wake up as late as they possibly can, and groggily drink coffee and look at memes while their kids refuse to eat their breakfasts, like normal people.
The problem here is that all that BS is intended to make all us regular folk feel inadequate. It’s supposed to make us think that the reason we don’t have cool, exciting jobs is because our morning routines aren’t as good as the people in the articles.
Unfortunately, it’s even worse when the person is actually honest about their morning routine because then it’s excruciatingly dull.
These are the details from the aforementioned “A Vintage Watch Specialist’s Morning Routine” article…
He wakes up, checks his phone, showers, feeds his cat, has coffee, and reads his email. The article really ends with a bang when it’s revealed that he never leaves his house without his keys, wallet, and phone!
Whew! I’m going to need to take a breather from that roller-coaster ride.
Unless what this person does in the morning is directly related to their interesting job title, then I don’t care. Which brings me to…
#2 – Their morning routine usually isn’t what has made them successful.
The allure of these kinds of articles is that we hope to glean some sort of insight into how these people attained their success.
We hope there is some nugget of wisdom that we can steal and use in our own lives.
“Oh! They do THAT in the morning!? I’m going to try that, too!”
Unfortunately, the reason people are successful usually has little to do with what they do in the morning. Sure, if you wake up early, exercise, eat healthfully, and get to work promptly you are probably going to be successful in whatever venture you choose. This isn’t news.
But there are also plenty of UNsuccessful people who do all these things, too. It’s not their morning routine that has made them a success. It’s what they do once they get to work that makes them successful.
It’s like those financial advice articles that talk about how Warren Buffet drives an old, crappy car and how that’s supposed to be some sort of profound statement about how to become rich, like him.
News flash: Warren Buffet’s lack of a monthly car payment isn’t what made him a billionaire.
If the morning routine of the individual in question includes something pertinent to their interesting job, then yes, I would like to hear about it. If there is something unique that they do in the morning that helps them be a better fill-in-the-blank, then that’s worth writing about. Otherwise, why mention their job title at all?
#3 – It’s not what makes that person interesting.
If you had a really cool job and met someone new, would you start off by telling them about what you ate for breakfast? Of course not. You would tell them that you are a vintage watch specialist, or whatever, because THAT’S actually interesting.
If I see an article about a vintage watch specialist, I want to hear about what being a vintage watch specialist is all about! I don’t need to know that the guy fed his cat this morning.
These articles are basically saying “Hey, here is someone who has a cool and unique profession. But we aren’t going to talk about that. We are going to talk about the most mundane aspect of this person’s day. But we are going to get you to click on this article anyway by mentioning their cool and unique profession even though it has nothing to do with what you are about to read.”
I am likely fooling myself, though. I know that the next time I see one of these insipid articles in my inbox I am going to eagerly click to see what time a lion tamer wakes up, or how an astronaut makes his eggs, or how much time a stunt pilot spends scrolling through Instagram while on the john.
But it doesn’t mean I won’t be annoyed about it all the same.
